The Ginger Ale Phenomenon
Last year I flew about 130,000 miles (I'm the guy with the bottle of water, Bose headphones, iPod and WSJ). Nothing to be proud of, but it does provide you with some interesting time to evaluate fellow travelers and their habits. One I have not yet been able to figure out is what I'll call the Ginger Ale Phenomenon.
I would absolutely swear that more than 50% of the nonalcoholic drink orders on my flights are for ginger ale.
What is it about ginger ale? If I had to guess, I'd bet that outside of an airplane, less than 10% of the soda I've seen people drink in my life has been ginger ale.
Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I discovered a few interesting items of note. For startersI am not nearly the first to notice the Phenomenon - according to Dan Charnas on the Columbia School of Journalism News Service site, one in ten drinks ordered on American Airlines is a ginger ale (10%), while less than 3% of regular soft drink consumption is ginger ale. I won't spend more time on the subject - Dan does a pretty good job of answering my questions about the Phenomenon - read his post if you're interested.
I did also learn on Wikipedia that the average American consumes 55 gallons of soda per year (about 19 ounces per day), which is a scary statistic. Random post for the day.
Comments
Even though I rarely drink ginger ale on the ground, I order it all the time on planes. It all stems from an occasion when a flight attendant served me Coke in a cup with a small hole in the bottom. It wasn't flowing out fast enough to notice when she was handing it to me. Once I noticed that it was dripping out all over me, there wasn't really anywhere to go with it, since I was stuck in the middle seat. Very traumatic if you have packed light or are on a day drip without luggage. I figure ginger ale will dry a little less noticeably if there is a spill. The whole tomato juice phenomenon kind of blows my theory though. You may see me muttering under my breath when I'm sitting in the aisle seat with my ginger ale in hand as the flight attendant reaches precariously over me to hand a tomato juice to my neighbor in the middle or window seat.
Posted by: Doug Lane | January 25, 2007 05:09 PM
Jeff,
You've been watching too much Sienfeld! However, next time I fly (a meager 110K a year) I will have to look for the Ginger Ale orders.
Posted by: Marc Weiser | January 30, 2007 04:42 PM